There are two pieces of great news that make this morning seem luxurious. The first is that I got my “W” key back – it had stopped working entirely and I as forced to paste it in or find another way to say the words work, wonder and why. The vast internet(s) helped me find out how to reprogram my keyboard and now my F2 key is behaving like a w, so I’m THRILLED. (Now if I can just reprogram my finger to remember that we’re in business.)
The second is this delightfully guilty pleasure I think you will share reading this article about the end of trapping in California – I imagine for many, many people it’s producing a thrill akin to watching porn. As a woman whose written about the ‘dying noble trapper‘ articles that appear religiously from Nebraska to Alberta every single winter, it is truly wonderful. Get your popcorn or your donut and settle in because honestly it’s that good.
As anti-fur sentiment grows, California’s oldest trappers are calling it quits
After a lifetime spent trapping animals in California’s western Sierra Nevada, Tim Wion traveled to Oregon recently to make one big, final sale at the annual Klamath Falls fur auction.
Unlike his fellow woodsmen, however, Wion wasn’t hawking the luxuriant pelts of wolves, bobcats, otters, coyotes, foxes and muskrat. Instead, the 75-year-old was selling off the many foothold traps and fur-stretchers that once provided him a livelihood.
“I’ve got no use for them,” Wion told a reporter. “Trapping is dead in California.”
See what I mean? That kind of start to an article right away makes you want to lean back on one elbow in bed and smoke a cigarette. Savor it all. It gets better.
A San Francisco ban on fur sales took effect in January, while two bills in the state Legislature seek to ban trapping for commercial purposes and outlaw the sale of fur products statewide. At the same time, a coalition of animal rights activists called Direct Action Everywhere is stepping up demonstrations at fashion shows and department stores.
“I’ve been on the front lines of this battle since the 1990s,” Aiton said. “But there will be no fighting this time. I’m 77 and … my health won’t allow me to fight one more minute.”
“They won. We lost,” Aiton said.
“My association is not fighting back because trapping is a dead horse in California,” Aiton said, “and there isn’t a dad gum thing we can do about it.”
Oh that’s sweet. The reporter who wrote this must know it’s sweet, right? I mean Mr. Louis Sahagun couldn’t be thinking readers would be sad or wistful when they read this, right? He’s got to know he’s giving a lot of people a lot of cheap thrills.
One of the bills slated for a final vote this summer was introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), who argues that there are so few active trappers in the state that their license fees no longer cover the expense of regulating the industry.
A total of 68 trappers reported killing 1,568 animals statewide in 2017, according to the most recent data available from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Among the 10 species reported taken were coyote, gray fox, beaver, badger and mink.
The revenue received by the Department of Fish and Wildlife for the sale of their trapping licenses was $15,544 and $709 for the sale of fur dealer licenses, officials said. Many of those trapping licenses were held by pest control companies.
The costs of regulating trappers doesn’t even pay for itself anymore! Mind you, I’m enjoying this too much to even begin to talk about the unregulated free-for-all that is depredation. Apparently California is just fine with killing animals as long as you don’t wear them afterwards, but that’s a fight for another day. Let’s just enjoy this for now shall we?
“What’s happening in California is too bad,” Nichols said. “We see the problem there as a movement of people who regard wild animals as almost human-like.”
Ahh, I can’t believe this article is going to make us all climax again so soon, but shh, here’s my favorite part.
Trapping advocate Nick Catrina, who runs a pest control business in Stockton, offers a less politically correct reason for trapping’s demise in the Golden State.
“Animal rights activists are terrorist groups, mostly led by lesbians, who destroy property and burn down animal research facilities for their cause,” Catrina said. “And progressives, in their march toward communism, are trying to ban trapping. They’ll get rid of hunting too after they take over the government of the United States.”
Communist lesbian terrorists! The indigo girls perform Karl Marx with pipe bombs?
Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my goodness this article is so delicious it should be fattening. I just want to stash it in a brown paper bag and place it under the bed so I can read my favorite parts over and over again every night. I just can’t think of anything better that he forgot to mention. The funny part is that I recognize Mr. Catrina’s name from reading years of beaver depredation permits. I guess sometimes he moonlights in pest control. Next time I’ll say hi!
Today, trappers who were taught the secrets of their trade before their teens by older friends and relatives are feeling isolated.
“Old trappers are dying off,” Aiton said, “and not being replaced by younger ones.”
He realized that trapping was in trouble in California when, he said, “I ran out of world — the places I used to trap were covered with new homes and tough laws.”
The article ends with the wistful mention of his placing a live trap on his front porch to catch the occasional opossum or raccoon and watching them walk off merrily into the sunrise as he whispers goodbye, but it’s too late.
By then we are already lost in the the glorious sunrise of our own.
